James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Meanwhile, blog reader Jason Peck sent me this image with the following question:

This is a pretty neat photo, but I really can't figure out exactly what I'm looking at. I know it’s an illusion, but I can’t figure out how it works. Something tells me its Photoshopped, but I could be wrong. What do you think?

Let me turn the question over to you first. At 6:00 p.m. Eastern time I’ll post the answer I came up with.------Added at 6:00.I can hardly add to the perceptive explanations in the comments, explaining that this is a real object. I agree, and here's what I said to Jason:

These three dimensional illusions do exist as real objects, and I believe this one is real. They're only viewable from one angle. In this case the horizontal piece coming across the middle is actually in front of the right hand vertical bar, but it is beveled in such a way as to look like it is tucked behind.

The giveaway is the cast shadow from that central horizontal bar. It travels diagonally down the figure and then across the floor grid and stops just to the left of the watch, proof that the horizontal leg is unattached.

Blog reader Jay Meinhardt actually created the figure in his CAD program. That's awesome. Thanks, Jay, and thanks everybody for your great explanations.

26 comments:

It could be a photoshop cause anything really could be but I say real because if the camera was positioned correctly you could have a piece coming off the left side with an angle cut to create the illusion of it continuing into the right side. To back that up the shadow for the left side seems to show a short piece coming directly off.

It's actually very real. A very clever illusion, but it has one giveaway. There is a piece that jut out from the near side of the frame and is cut at precisely the angle that the camera is looking at it. It lines up optically from camera's point of view with the post coming out from the far end of the frame...however the illusion is that they appear to be the same. The clue is the color of the shadows. You can see in the reflected light...the color of the wooden desk. It reflects its warm color onto the shadow side of the near post...the cut one..but not the far post...which is brighter and not colored.

The middle intersecting beam does not actually exit the right vertical beam. Check the cast shadow on the graph paper, that beam connects to nothing and the little piece jutting out of the right vertical beam helps the illusion.

This is no photoshop job. It's clever use of a limited view point and psychology (i.e. our minds tend to "correct" images for us unconciously).

What a great illusion! I wonder if I could build something cool like that for on my desk :)

NortonVirus is right, I think.It's not just the reflected color that gives it away, but also in the shadow from the piece itself.You can see the shadow from the 'impossible' part sticking out, and ending without connecting at the other end.

Real, using forced perspective-- the one arm juts out at an odd angle, & if turned you'd see it looking more like a hedgehog, beams pointing everywhere! Like everyone else says, the shadows are a good clue.

Everyone else pretty much solved it. It is most definitely real, and it only looks correct from one angle. Viewed any other way, and the whole thing looks like an exploded mess of pieces that makes no sense whatsoever. I remember seeing a video a loooong ways back about several of these and how they make them. Here's actually an example of another optical illusion sculpture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uf0Gj3sX8Y

It is real, actually the middle bar is not join one of the sides,is coming perpendicular to the column that is attach, You can see the shadow of the middle bar is coming forward. so that middle bar is attach to th left column, and because the angle of the camara makes you think that is attach to the right column as well

You have to photograph these models with a long lens to get the necessary isometric perspective. If the sides of the beams are not parallel (or nearly so), it is obvious that parts are at the wrong angles. I remember making an impossible triangle (basically the top half of this example) back in the 1960s and having to photograph it from a good distance.

hi James It might be real but the two vertical posts front planes point in the same direction and sense the extended horizontal post comes off the the same front plane on the near post it could never intersect the other post. Partellel lines never cross each otherTom